A Nobel laureate has quit one of the world's leading organisations for scientists in protest at its assertion that the evidence of damaging global warming is "incontrovertible".

In a fresh challenge to claims that there is scientific "consensus" on climate change, Prof Ivar Giaever has resigned from the American Physical Society, where his peers had elected him a fellow to honour his work.

The society, which has 48,000 members, has adopted a policy statement which states: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring."

But Prof Giaever, who shared the 1973 Nobel award for physics, told The Sunday Telegraph. "Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science."

The US-based Norwegian physicist, who is the chief technology officer at Applied Biophysics Inc and a retired academic at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world, added: "Global warming has become the new religion."

Prof Giaever was one of Barack Obama's leading scientific supporters during the 2008 president election campaign, joining 70 Nobel science laureates endorsing his candidacy.

There is no disagreement that the earth’s temperature has always changed over time. There are periods of warming and cooling. It appears we are in a period of warming. The debate between “warmists” and “skeptics” is about whether human Co2 emissions are the cause of warming, whether the relatively small effects of these emissions will compound into larger changes, and, if so, whether, the benefits of remediation outweigh the costs. By “warmists,” I mean Global Warming Alarmists who believe that warming is caused by humans and will have disastrous consequences for humankind if unchecked by remediation, no matter how costly.

The “warmist” consensus view of “climate science” is represented at a popular level by advocates like Al Gore and at the scientific and technical level by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as supported by researchers at East Anglia (Phil Jones) and Penn State (Michael Mann). This panoply of people and organizations is the equivalent of the Central Committee in my Stalin dialog above. “Skeptics” (the equivalent of Trotsky above) are individual scientists and advocates who stake out positions at odds with the IPCC-Central Committee orthodoxy. They are the ones who “dare to speak when fierce growling dogs roam everywhere.”

Three recent events have brought the controversy over climate science back into the news and onto my radar screen:

First, Ivar Giaever, the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, resigned from the American Physical Society over his disagreement with its statement that “the evidence (on warming alarmism) is incontrovertible.” Instead, he writes that the evidence suggests that “the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”

The global-warming theory is nearing its end as evidence against it mounts

Why do a majority of Canadians — 52% according to the latest Angus Reid poll — still hold the belief that humans are mainly responsible for global warming?

I think I know, based on the feedback I’ve received from literally thousands of Canadians who have commented in recent years on my articles dealing with global warming. Most of that 52% have so often been told that the science is settled on global warming, and so rarely that there is any credible dissent, that they have not yet twigged to straightforward information, such as the rejection by most top scientists of the global-warming dogma.

Just this week, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever resigned as a fellow from the American Physical Society, saying he could not live with its nonsensical endorsement of global-warming alarmism. Dr. Giaever joins a host of other eminent scientists who have dismissed concerns over global warming, including Freeman Dyson, a Princeton physicist and America’s best known scientist, Antonino Zichichi, the president of the World Federation of Scientists and Italy’s best known scientist, Claude Allegre, a former socialist Minister of National Education, Research and Technology and France’s best-known scientist, and America’s Reid Bryson, known as the “father of scientific climatology” and judged “the world’s most cited climatologist” by the journal of the Institute of British Geographers.

In contrast to this Who’s Who of the scientific world, the list of top global-warming scientists falls far short. No scientist has been awarded a Nobel Prize in a science field for his work on global warming because no piece of science in the field has achieved a major scientific breakthrough. This despite the global-warming issue’s dominance of the scientific world for more than two decades, garnering the lion’s share of scientific funding and an inordinate amount of coverage in scientific publications. The only Nobel Prize conferred on global-warming advocates came from the political wing of the Nobel Prize establishment, which awarded them a prize for peace in consolation for their failure to merit a prize for science.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Ivar Giaever: 'The temperature (of the Earth) has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period

Nobel prize winner for physics in 1973 Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group's promotion of man-made global warming fears. Climate Depot has obtained the exclusive email Giaever sent titled "I resign from APS" to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby to announce his formal resignation.

Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.'

Giaever announced his resignation from APS was due to the group's belief in man-made global warming fears. Giaever explained in his email to APS: "In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."

Giaever was one of President Obama's key scientific supporters in 2008. Giaever joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorse Obama in an October 29, 2008 open letter. In addition to Giaever, other prominent scientists have resigned from APS over its stance on man-made global warming. See: Prominent Physicist Hal Lewis Resigns from APS: 'Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen...Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science'